Rules

My kids have strong ideas about the One Right Way to do Christmas Eve.

1. The tree cannot be decorated until Christmas Eve.
2. It is better if the tree is not purchased until Christmas Eve, but sometimes a little flexibility is required on this one.
3. If you don't cut the tree down with your own hands, it doesn't really count. It might look like a Christmas tree and quack like a Christmas tree, but it is not a Christmas tree. (What do you mean, your Christmas tree doesn't quack?)
4. There must be fish for dinner. We are not even remotely Italian, but we still make Italian cookies and eat fish for dinner on Christmas Eve. It's an appreciative sort of appropriation.
5. After dinner on Christmas Eve it is time for one round of presents.
6. Presents are always to be opened in rounds: you plan your sequence, you take turns opening so everybody can ooh and aah, and then you pause. (Tonight's sequence: reverse alphabetical by shoe size, so that the boy with size twelve feet was followed by the girl with size thirteen feet and then the boy with size 10.5 feet. There was a contingent in favor of reverse alphabetical by favorite painter, but shoe size prevailed.)
7. Small sisters who lobby to open more than one present on Christmas Eve must be told in kind but firm big-brotherly tones that the other presents are for tomorrow.
8. Midnight Mass is the best mass.

Merry Christmas, friends!